Climate Change and Common Sense

Essays in Honour of Tom Schelling

Edited by Robert W. Hahn and Alastair Ulph

Focus on practical implications of climate change
Contributions from leading experts
Highlights the contribution of Nobel Laureate Tom Schelling to the discipline
Several chapters offer new perspectives on climate change issues

Climate Change and Common Sense

Essays in Honour of Tom Schelling

Edited by Robert W. Hahn and Alastair Ulph

Description

There is widespread agreement that climate change is a serious problem. If we fail to regulate greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, or use alternative strategies for addressing the problem, the damages could be significant, and perhaps catastrophic.

After several international meetings in which nation-states have tried unsuccessfully to address the climate change problem, there is a sense of frustration and urgency: frustration at the slow pace at which countries are moving toward an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; urgency because of the growing evidence that climate change is a serious problem that should be addressed globally and quickly.

This book takes a close look at the fundamental political and economic processes driving climate change policy. It identifies institutional arrangements and policies that are needed to design more effective climate change policy. It also examines ethical and distributional arguments that are critical in understanding and framing the climate debate. The book is built around a conference honouring Tom Schelling that took place at the Sustainable Consumption Institute at The University of Manchester. Each chapter represents a significant contribution to the literature on the political economy of climate change.

Climate Change and Common Sense

Essays in Honour of Tom Schelling

Edited by Robert W. Hahn and Alastair Ulph

Introduction and Overview
1. Thinking through the Climate Change Challenge, Robert W. Hahn and Alistair Ulph
Part I: Getting Nations to Work Together
2. Norms, Conventions, and Institutions to Cope with Climate Change, Thomas Schelling
3. Credible Commitments, Focal Points, and Tipping: The Strategy of Climate Treaty Design, Scott Barrett
4. Tipping Climate Negotiations, Geoffrey Heal and Howard Kunreuther
5. Bridging Reality and the Theory of International Environmental Agreements, Charles D. Kolstad
6. The Cost of Ambiguity and Robustness in International Pollution Control, Anastasios Xepapadeas
Part II: Ethical and Distributional Concerns
7. Time and the Generations, Partha Dasgupta
8. Discounting While Treating Generations Equally, Geir B. Asheim
9. Emerging Markets and Climate Change: Mexican Standoff or Low-carbon Race?, David J. Frame and Cameron J. Hepburn
Part III: Approaches to Designing More Efficient Policies
10. Moving US Climate Policy Forward: Are Carbon Taxes the Only Good Alternative?, Ian Parry and Roberton C. Williams III
11. Carbon Taxes and the Green Paradox, Michael Hoel
12. Derivative Markets for Pollution Permits and Incentives to Innovate, Linda R. Cohen and Amihai Glazer
13. Development and Climate Adaptation, Robert Mendelsohn
14. Schelling's Conjecture on Climate and Development: A Test, David Anthoff and Richard S.J. Tol

Climate Change and Common Sense

Essays in Honour of Tom Schelling

Edited by Robert W. Hahn and Alastair Ulph

Author Information

From 1999 to 2008, Professor Hahn served as the director of the AEI-Brookings Joint Center, a leader in policy research in law and economics, regulation, and antitrust. Previously, he worked for the US President's Council of Economic Advisers, where he helped design the market-based cap-and-trade system for limiting smokestack sulfur emissions at minimum cost to industry. He also served on the faculties of Harvard University and Carnegie Mellon University. Professor Hahn is a frequent contributor to leading scholarly journals including the American Economic Review, Science, and the Yale Law Journal, as well as to general-interest periodicals including the New York Times and Forbes.com. He is also the co-founder of Regulation2point0.org.

Following employment at the Oxford Centre for Management Studies, Stirling University and Australian National University, Professor Ulph spent 25 years (1979-2004) at the University of Southampton, the last 20 of these as Professor of Economics, with spells as Visiting Professor at the University of British Columbia (1985), Australian National University (2002), and University of California Santa Barbara (2002). He was appointed Economic Assessor for the Hinkley Point C Public Inquiry (1989-90) and elected President of European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (2000-2001) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (2000-). Between April 2004 and 2010 he held the post of Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at The University of Manchester. He has published 6 books and over 100 refereed papers.

Climate Change and Common Sense

Essays in Honour of Tom Schelling

Edited by Robert W. Hahn and Alastair Ulph

Reviews and Awards

"Climate Change and Common Sense showcases the latest insights of many of the world's leading economists working on climate change policy... it advances a rich foundation for future scholarship that can promote better climate-change policy." -- Joseph E. Aldy, Journal of Regional Science

"Some chapters of the book are fairly technical, yet the majority of the book is accessible to readers at the Master's degree level. It is a refreshing treatment of the most important subjects in climate change economics, all organized around Tom Schelling's insights from two or more decades ago, which unfortunately are still valid to this day. Twenty years have passed since the Rio Earth Summit. Annual global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion have increased by 49%. Emissions by the US have increased by 13% since 1990, while emissions by the PRC have increased by 235%. To solve this 'grand-daddy of public goods problems' more innovative thinking along the lines of the essays in this book is urgently needed."--Journal of Economic Literature

Climate Change and Common Sense

Essays in Honour of Tom Schelling

Edited by Robert W. Hahn and Alastair Ulph

From Our Blog

Thomas Schelling: An unconventional economist

Thomas Schelling was one of the best, and most unconventional, economists of his generation. Using simple arithmetic and more common sense than most economists are born with, he could turn problems upside down and inside out, and come up with novel solutions. Thomas liked to tell a story, over a nice glass of wine, about how he would find a friend in Washington DC if they were separated.

Posted on January 25, 2017

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